Review of Hangover 2- by Mark Kermode

Full text transcript of the review of Hangover 2:

Apparently, in the case of The Hangover, apparently it was the biggest grossing R rated movie, you know, to date. OK, so in the first film, what does that indicate it means? Yeah, great fun. OK, so the first film essentially story was a bunch of people go to Vegas for a stag date, for a stag to wake up in the morning. Cottman, what they did have to retrace their footsteps.

This time they go to Bangkok for a wedding and then they wake up in the morning and they come and what they did. So they have to retrace their footsteps. Only the twisties. It’s in Bangkok. In fact, it says in the press that, you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in Bangkok can’t even be described, which doesn’t trip off the tongue. Not really. Here’s a clip.

I don’t get it, man. Well, we each had one beer last night, right? I mean, you two.

Yeah, but I left early, remember, Tracy wasn’t feeling well. She came down to get me.

Wait a second. Is Teddy with you guys? What are you talking about?

He wasn’t in his room. They’ve been looking for him all morning. Teddy went to Stanford, right? Yeah. Why. I just figure but. I just think of Dr. Phil, what is going on?

All right, I guess we’re going to tell the girls that we woke up, really went on a fishing trip.

Ok, that’s where we are. Right. All right. Stay on the phone.

So so essentially what you’ve got is you’ve got the same film again, but louder, cruder, scarier, slightly more sort of, you know, full on it as much as everything. And one of the things that happens with comedy is when people realize that things aren’t funny, they decide that the best way to make them funny is to shout. It’s to make them louder is to have more car chases, more stories, more crashes.

But fundamentally, you’ve got a rehash of The Hangover, which itself was a rehash of, dude, where’s my car? I mean, the idea. But you wake up in the morning, you come in where you are, you got to retrace your footsteps.

It’s, dude, where’s my wedding? So therefore, this is effectively, dude, where’s my wedding partner? Except essentially due date was effectively the hangover part two. Anyway, so this is dude, where’s where’s my wedding part three. And if you look at I mean, honestly, it is like somebody they could not be bothered to think of anything new other than I know it’s in Bangkok. That’s the joke. So in the first film, they lost the groom.

In this film, they’ve lost the bride’s brother. In the first film, the straight guy lost a tooth, got intimate with a prostitute. This one, the straight guy gets a tattoo, which incidentally, is currently the subject of a lawsuit, apparently, and gets intimate with the prostitute. The original idea, Tiger, this has got a stray monkey. You’ve got the guy who is a comedy oriented gangster.

He’s a comedy oriented gangster. Again, the point at which I abandon all hope in the first one was when they did the comedy cameo by Mike Tyson, which was like, no, come on, really. And and unbelievably enough, you know, there’s been all this stuff about who’s the who’s the great cameo is going to be in the film this time. At one point, I think people are talking about Mel Gibson, which actually would have been quite funny.

But it’s like, no, we can’t be bothered to be original in any way whatsoever. What you do get is Paul Giamatti, who turns up to pick up the paycheck, and he’s got a look on his face of somebody who just got paid a massive amount of money to do really, really very little, which he knows as well as anybody else. He’s completely, you know, is substandard. So there’s two problems with it. Well, three problems. Well, four in fact, the first first problem is that it’s not as funny as the first film. And I didn’t think the first film was funny. Anyway, I’m sorry.

I know other people did. I didn’t. But it’s louder and shouting and swearing and crude. The second problem is that all the gags from the first film, which apparently some people thought of as original, although they actually weren’t original, have been rehashed but done in a in a much more crass way.

And they’re not funny. And then you actually have this kind of underlying I mean, it’s awful to use this word, but there are philosophical problems with the movie. I mean, the philosophical premise being firstly is profoundly racist. It’s you go to this other place where basically everyone is either a transvestite or a drug dealer or, you know, or gay or basically a comedy caricature.

And I wonder how this is going to play in territories outside of the American speaking world, as it’s now referred to, in which people are talking about a minute, is this OK? There’s also a rampant strain of homophobia running all the way through the movie. And there’s this this is really sort of strange sense that if something isn’t funny, if you just drag it down and debase it enough and shout and make it make it crude, vulgar and stupid enough, then somehow it will end up being funny.

Hanover 2- the height of comedy

This is a movie which thinks that the height of comedy is a monkey biting someone’s willy. And I mean, that’s the that’s the point at which you can see the scriptwriters high five each other because it actually, you know. Yeah, that’s really funny. Right, OK, it’s a monkey. And the other thing so and I sat there watching and I really I promise you, I did I went in with an open mind. I know nobody believes this, but I went in with an open mind thinking, actually, wouldn’t it be nice if Hangover two was funny, if Hangover actually managed to make me laugh, even if they bawdy laughs That’s not a problem at all.

I’m more one for crossborder. And in fact, I quite like, dude, where’s my car? You know, they’re going to make a sequel called Seriously, dude, where’s my car? Ever got around to doing that? But I sat there watching. I was thinking, this is just horrible. It’s not just that it’s not funny and that it’s racist and that it’s homophobic and it’s stupid. And it’s all the jokes that you saw. It’s actually got a deep underlying nastiness about it. Incidentally, the other thing it considers is that all women are either wives who just stand idly by and allow this stuff to happen or our characters to be, you know, to be laughed at or ogled at.

And there is essentially it is a film entirely about blokes and this idea of what blokes are like together and, you know, people talking about date movies and take it’s on every single level. It is a movie to avoid not only for taking a date, but for taking yourself to. It’s not funny. It’s too loud. It’s too so it’s vulgar, crass, stupid, racist, homophobic. And worst of all, all the jokes that weren’t funny the first time round, including the joke that was the least funny the first time round turns up, the second time round only louder. And in Bangkok.